Welcome to the New Order
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day six hundred and thirty-four: Now it's our Quinn's turn to wake up in the alternate world, finding Jesse and Rachel there.


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 30th cycle. Now cycle 31!_

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><p><strong>Hear that little bird twitter!<strong> _Been thinking about doing this for a couple days, then this morning decided to just go for it. If you go there, find 'gleekathon' and there I'll be. There's also a video explaining everything... Yep... ;) Check it out!_

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><p><strong>"Welcome to the New Order"<br>Rachel/Jesse & Quinn  
>#17 (sequel to 'Let the Flood Wash In') <strong>

Quinn hadn't felt so tired all day, which had made the constant yawning kind of odd. It was like her body was telling her to go and lie down, and she honestly didn't know why. Her mother had worried that she might be coming down with something and insisted she went to at least lie down, maybe take a nap… It honestly seemed like a good idea at that moment, so she didn't fight her on it. She went, she laid down, and no more than a few seconds later, she had drifted…

As quickly as the exhaustion had fallen on her, when she woke again she felt completely rested. She frowned, completely confused, but she sat up, and… It wasn't like with the others; the room she woke up in was her own, same as she'd left it… almost how she'd left it. Some things looked… not right, out of place, but not so much that she would have guessed anything had happened. That realization came, like a ton of bricks, when she went down to breakfast and found her father sitting there, reading the paper just as he always was… before.

"What are you doing here?" her anger, now common place where her father was concerned, didn't register as much as her surprise did. Russell Fabray put his paper down, smiling that smile of his.

"Good morning, dear, did you sleep well?" She didn't know how to answer… she didn't know how to speak to him. What was he doing there? He looked like he fully belonged in that chair, even though he hadn't occupied it since her mother had kicked him out. Just then, her mother came in, carrying two plates of breakfast.

"Hurry up and eat before it gets cold," she gave that happy homemaker smile of hers, setting down the plates and stopping at her husband's side as though the space had been reserved for her – the dutiful wife, standing by her man. All of it looked so normal, the way it had before, that she let herself get drawn in for a moment, taking her seat, her fork. She looked from one parent to the other as they started their breakfast… what had gotten into these two?

Then she had a thought… so small, so ridiculous, but considering events of recent days… Her eyes drifted to the newspaper which her father had left sitting on the table when he started eating, and she pressed her finger on the edge to pull it closer to herself. She looked at the date, and she froze.

"Quinn? Is everything alright?" her mother asked, and she let go of the newspaper, digging into her plate of food.

"Great… just great," she told her. She was going to play like everything was normal, just for now… just so she didn't cause alarm. But she needed to get to McKinley and find them.

Getting up to her closet, a thought occurred to her… Was she a Cheerio in this world? She had no idea… She tried to think back to what the Jesse she'd met had said, and she took a chance by putting on her regular clothes. If she'd guessed wrong, she could probably find an excuse to feed to Coach Sylvester.

At least she was beginning to understand how it must have felt for him, going into a place that should have felt familiar, but knowing things would not be as she remembered them to be, not everywhere. Well, not completely… At least in her case she knew there would be two people in that building she knew without a doubt would be exactly who they had been, because they too had landed in this world. She found them at Jesse's locker, and it was Rachel who looked back first. Quinn signalled quietly for them to follow her. Hearing the locker door shut, she knew they were there. They landed in the home economics kitchen, which was empty.

"Shut the doors, please?" she told them, and they did.

"What's up?" Rachel asked once this was done. "Did you think of a way to get us home?"

"I'm afraid it's more complicated than that," Quinn started. "Come here," she pulled Rachel aside, turning away slightly. She lifted up her shirt, just enough for Rachel to see the stretch marks she so desperately tried to hide and/or forget most of the time, but in this case displayed willingly, the better to show Rachel that she was not the Quinn of this world… She was the Quinn she had known all along.

"Oh no…" Rachel gasped.

"Afraid so…" Quinn let go of the shirt hem.

"What's going on?" Jesse asked. Part of him knew, but he had to ask.

"This is our real Quinn, the one from our world," Rachel pointed. "But… wait, you weren't… You already know what's going on, don't you? That means…" she stopped herself. The answer was right there on her lips, but she refused to speak it. Quinn did it for her.

"That means while I woke up here, joining you two, this other me must have joined the other you two in our… world… Can't believe I just said that…" she mumbled.

"Great, so instead of fixing the problem, now it's gotten bigger?" Jesse groaned.

"Was she helping you guys too? The other me?" Quinn asked Rachel, and she got a nod. "Must be why this happened then, right?"

"You're asking us?" Jesse shrugged.

"Well at least she'll be back with her… boyfriend," Rachel's eyes flicked to Jesse before turning back to Quinn. "You… knew about that, right?" she asked. Quinn and Jesse shared a look; they had both met with one half of that couple, known their story… That didn't change the fact that now it was just them, the Quinn and Jesse who had known one another as rivals on the Glee Club stage… no romance here, just the knowledge that somewhere out there another pair with their faces and most of their lives as well were probably having some big dramatic reunion… and it was awkward.

"Yeah, I did. But how is this supposed to help any of us get back where we belong, if there's just more of us like this and no one from the other side?" Quinn frowned.

"Did any of you guys over there think of anything?" Rachel asked.

"We didn't get to. I was still getting to know that Jesse, and the other you, w…" Quinn stopped, feeling awkward about the next part.

"What? What about the other me?" Rachel asked, a bit unsettled, needing to know.

"Well, she…" Quinn started. "Y… She… She's kind of… the bitchy diva from hell…" Rachel was taken aback. "You kicked Azimio in the…" Quinn had begun to make the gesture.

"Okay, we get it!" Jesse had intercepted, with a sympathetic groan. Rachel looked slightly embarrassed at hearing about her doppelganger.

"She was uncooperative at best. Jesse, the other one, he wanted to try talking to her again, but I suggested he take it easy for a couple of days."

"Yeah, good luck with that. If he's me…" Jesse started.

"He's nothing like you," Quinn spoke, sounding defensive of the guy she'd gotten to know.

"But he's still me, no matter where we are. I'd put good money in that he'll try fishing out a solution on his own, and he's already gone to meet her."

"Great, perfect…" Quinn sighed.

"No, this is good!" Rachel insisted. "I'm sure I could help," she nodded, and they knew she meant the other her.

"Don't be so sure," Quinn started, thinking back to the ambush they'd put on for her at the music store. "I never got to find out what it was, but I got the impression that something was keeping her there." Rachel looked up at that; in an instant she knew what it was that would hold the other her to want to stay… to keep away from the very thing she so desperately wanted to escape – her broken family.

"We're in trouble…"

THE END

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><p><strong>AN: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
><strong>**In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
><strong>******always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!******


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